She was completely dumbfounded by his anger. “They were going to murder you, Jesstin.”
“And?” Resentment flashed in his eyes.
“You’re serious?”
“Entirely!”
“You would have done it for me,” she retorted.
“No.” His expression twisted in contempt. He was unsettled, rightly, but his anger toward her made no sense at all. “I would not have. It wouldn’t have even crossed my mind. I helped you because your mother asked me to, but I’ll hold no guilt for your death, because you will die, you stupid, stupid...” His mouth pursed.
“This isn’t who you are,” she stammered. “You’re acting like... like...” Like Taven. Like Fabrien. Like Castien.
“And how the fuck would you know who I am? Your brother thought he knew me and look where that...” He bent in a sudden vomit.
“Where what?”
He dragged his sleeve over his mouth. “I’ll never touch you... never put a child in you. You’re fucked. Me, I was fucked already, but you?”
The robed sister stepped between them before Elloven could fathom how to respond to his vicious shift of nature.
The girl tugged at both of their hands, placing them atop one another. Jesstin shook his head, looking everywhere but at Elloven, as the sister whispered words of magic too low to hear. Elloven tried to withdraw but was unable to move her hands at all. Jesstin laughed like a madman. Tears settled on his lower lashes.
What have I done? Elloven wondered as the magic drifted through her veins. She felt the bond forming... the crawling of skin over bone, the dread of being parted from someone she now, too late, understood couldn’t stand her, a feeling she was too stunned to reciprocate.
“You’re a daughter of the curia, and you don’t know fuck-all what that means, do you?” Jesstin asked as both their hands trembled from the weight of the curse. “You’d have known such magic is irreversible.”
Elloven didn’t have the heart to speak at all, not to him, not to anyone. But he had to be wrong. Of course it was reversible, and it was only further reinforcement she was meant to go to her people, where they could give her the means to undo magic they had created.
“It is done. You are bound under the web of magic woven between you. Absence leads to pain. If you allow more than a thousand feet to distance you, you will suffer increasingly until it is again narrowed. Pray your womb does not fail you,” the sister said and disappeared as hastily as she’d arrived.
Jesstin ripped his hands away. Elloven could only stare, speechless at how terribly she’d misjudged him—the entire situation.
A thunder of hooves had everyone turning toward the east, where Asterin and Rhiain sat at the head of a small cavalry. Asterin raised his sword, followed by Rhiain and then the rest of the men.
“Release my brother.” Asterin’s soft but deep voice carried on the wind. “There is no need for war.”
“You’re too late!” Meric cackled, slapping his thighs, spurring laughter all around. “Jesstin of Skylark and Edevane is already saved, by a daughter of the curia! His life is spared! They are bonded, and the chaos of time ticks, ticks, ticks!” Meric looked up at the couple, bound by magic, fate, and a newfound, unfathomable revulsion. He winked as though he knew something the two of them wouldn’t until it was too late. “For now.”
The Long Night
Chapter 6
My Ellie
It was Asterin’s idea to gather at Nightwood, out of consideration for Esmeray, who had left the property exactly once in the past year, to entreat the heathen for help.
Jesstin. Bloody. Skylark.
Ellie could judge the squalor of the estate, could lay the full accounting at Taven’s feet, but she truly had no idea the depth of compassion he’d swaddled her drunken mother with in her long absence. The liquor prevented Esmeray from dwelling on her litany of mistakes, which kept her mind intact. The filth reminded her of her shame, turning her into a hermit, which kept her safe. He couldn’t heal the malady draining her life away, but he could’ve eased her symptoms; she just wouldn’t let him. And if he were really the monster his love believed him to be, he would have shared with Esme every detail of the horrible things he’d seen happening to Ellie in Whitechurch, from the helplessness of his clairsight.
Taven was nothing like Fabrien or Castien, and it was appalling to have to prove it.
The bond was a complication he hadn’t foreseen, but Curia Rivenholde had the answer to every trouble of Ellie’s. The clairsight had been clear on that for years. He’d have ridden to Whitechurch and rescued her the day of her ill-fated wedding if the clairsight had allowed it, but it demanded his patience. He’d spent the entirety of that patience over seven long years, waiting for the day the clairsight had promised would come. And then it had, but Jesstin Bloody Skylark had swooped in and thrown everything out of order.
Show me what to do about the little meddling pervert sitting far too close to my Ellie.
The clairsight had only offered one insight on Jesstin though. Taven hadn’t even heard of an “Ivory Virtue,” let alone the archaic rules around their existence, but the clairsight had insisted he must persuade the girl to fabricate an assault charge. The clairsight had given him compromising information on her father’s business dealings in Bythesea, and when he’d dangled the idea of telling the tax collectors, she’d folded like a shirt. What Taven didn’t know was whether he’d been pushed down that path so Jesstin could be killed—in which case, he’d failed—or to orchestrate Ellie’s heroic intervention and the ridiculous “bond.” That seemed far less likely. The clairsight wanted Taven and Elloven together. It had said so all along.
